


The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place

by cannedpeaches



Series: All Roads Lead Me to This Place [4]
Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-18 03:17:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5896024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cannedpeaches/pseuds/cannedpeaches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had nothing left, until she found him. How Tommy met Maria.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hopeless Wanderer

The first time Maria laid eyes on the man who would become her husband, he was lying in a ditch.

She had been hunting in the woods that surrounded what was left of Jackson City when she spotted him, splattered with mud and lying in a puddle created by the previous night’s heavy rains. He wasn’t moving. Maria sighed; just her luck.

She crept through the brush, edging close to the prone man. She’d seen newly minted runners spring up from more impossible positions, and she wasn’t taking any chances. But as she finally stood at the edge of the ditch, the man still hadn’t moved. She pursed her lips, then poked him with the butt of her rifle, the pistol in her other hand aimed right between his eyes.

The man groaned, but didn’t wake up. It wasn’t the groan of the infected though; this man was still alive.

“Hey,” she said, prodding him again. “Wake up.”

The man’s eyes fluttered open and stared up, unseeing.

“Are you bit?” she asked.

“What?” The man’s voice was a raspy whisper.

“Are you bit?” she asked more loudly.

“No, I’m...” He pulled his hand away from his stomach. Both were covered with blood.

“Holy shit,” she muttered. She bent down and carefully pulled up his shirt. The wound looked bad, but it looked like it was just bits of shrapnel lodged in his gut. It would be relatively easy to patch him up.

She stood and whistled for her horse, who came cantered out from a clearing a few yards away.

“I’m gonna get you to a doctor,” she said to the man, grabbing him by the armpits and dragging him over to Virgil.

He didn’t reply; he had fallen unconscious again.

 

“How’s he looking?” Maria stood over strange man. He was lying on her dining room table, eyes closed. He’d woken up momentarily when her father had begun to pluck the shrapnel from his skin, but he’d passed out again from the pain shortly after.

“I’ve seen worse.” Maria’s father plunged his hands into a bowl of warm water. She watched the blood ebb from his skin. “He’ll live.”

“Hmm,” Maria said, crossing her arms.

“What are you thinking?” her father asked.

“I’m thinking about what the fuck we’re gonna do with him once he wakes up.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” He began packing up the first aid kit. “For now, let him sleep.”

As her father left the room, Maria eyed the injured man. As she examined him, she spied a bit of silver glinting around his neck. She pulled the chain loose and grimaced.

Tommy Miller.

Firefly.

 

When the man opened his eyes, Maria had her pistol cocked at him from the place where she sat, near his head.

“Rise and shine,” she said. “Although, I guess you already do.” She dropped his dogtag onto his chest.

The man reached up to close his fist around it, wincing as he moved. “Where am I?”

“I get to ask the questions here,” Maria said, bumping his temple with her pistol as a warning.

He turned to look at her. The defeat in his blue-gray eyes startled her. “If you’re gonna kill me, just fuckin’ do it.” He sounded weathered, beaten. And Southern, to Maria’s surprise.

“Let’s not be hasty,” she said, sitting back in her chair, but not moving her gun from his head. “Who are you? Where are you coming from?”

“Boston,” he said. He held up his dogtag. “You already know who I am.”

Maria blinked. This guy sure was flippant for someone with a gun to his head. “What the fuck are you doing all the way out here?” she asked.

“Marlene had a group of us strike out for the Denver QZ,” he said. “We were supposed to reinforce the group that’s already there.” He paused. “I suppose you already know who Marlene is.”

Maria snorted. “I think we all know who Marlene is.”

“Guess people do.” He moved his head to stare at the ceiling.

“So, I’m guessing your group didn’t make it there,” Maria prompted him.

The man coughed a bitter laugh. “Fuck if I know.”

“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“We got ambushed by some soldiers a few miles back. They hit us with a grenade. And my group left me there to die. Got as far as I could go before I fell into that ditch.”

His eyes drifted closed again, but pain was still etched into his weathered face. Maria wasn’t sure if it was from his wounds or from his betrayal.

“And then I found you,” she finished.

“And then you found me.” He turned to look at her again. “Why did you save me?”

Maria swallowed, a knot forming in her stomach. “I don’t know.”

Tommy made a sound that was almost a chuckle. “Okay.”

It was only after he fell back against the table, silent, that Maria noticed her father standing in the doorway, watching, a strange look on his face.

 

Tommy slept for hours.

“You can probably leave him,” Maria’s father said. He had found her keeping vigil over the newcomer as she cleaned her guns. “He seems harmless enough.”

“What, and come back and find out he woke up and made off with all our shit? No thanks.”

Her father shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Maria knew she had better things to do than watch over a half-dead man. The fence around Jackson was almost complete, and Sherry needed help patching up the house she had decided upon. But Maria stayed with the stranger.

Tommy woke as Maria was slotting the pieces of her rifle together. It was dark, and Maria was working by the light of an old lantern. He tried to push himself up onto his elbows, grunting from the pain. Maria reached out for his shoulder, pushing him back down to the table.

“Take it easy,” she said. “You hungry?”

“Starvin’,” he said, his voice a little stronger than it had been.

Maria went to the adjoining kitchen and ladled some broth from the pot on the stove. Her father had gone to bed an hour ago. When she returned to the dining room, Tommy was sitting up and facing the chair where she had been sitting, his legs dangling off the table. She looked from him to her guns, but it looked like he hadn’t made a move for them.

“You’re a stubborn bastard,” she said, but there was no heat behind it. She handed him the bowl of broth.

“Thanks.” He ignored the spoon she’d given him, choosing to tip the liquid into his mouth instead. He drained the bowl in seconds.

“Want more?”

He shook his head, setting the bowl beside him. “Do I get to ask the questions now?”

Maria settled back into her chair. “A few.”

Tommy looked thoughtful. After a few moments, he asked, “Where exactly am I?”

“Wyoming,” Maria said.

“Where in Wyoming?”

“Next question.”

Tommy chortled. “Okay. What’s your name?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

He threw his hands up. “I’m just askin’! You know my name.”

She couldn’t argue with that. “I’m Maria.”

“Maria.” He sounded like he was rolling her name around in his mouth, and she wasn’t sure if she liked that.

“Next question,” she said, harsher than she needed to be.

“Where are you from?” he asked, letting her tone go.

“I live here.”

“But are you from here?”

“No.”

“Then where?” Tommy’s expression was a cross between exasperated and amused.

Maria shifted in her seat, stared at her shoes, then mumbled, “New York.”

“What?”

“New York,” she repeated, her teeth gritted. She felt heat sliding into her cheeks.

Tommy stared at her. “Like...the city?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve gotta be kiddin’ me.” His eyes were bright in the lantern light. “A city girl like you, out in the --”

“No more questions,” she said, cutting him off. She moved to get up, but he flapped a hand at her.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” he said, looking sheepish. There as a desperate edge in his voice that surprised her. She settled in her chair again, curious now.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. She said nothing, watching him.

“Fine,” he said. “You don’t trust me? I’ll tell you all about me, then. You won’t have to answer anythin’.”

Maria schooled her features into a neutral expression. He shifted under her glare, then cleared his throat and began to talk.

He talked like there was a dam bursting inside of him.

He told her about Texas, about humid summers and mild winters, about growing up on a farm, about the sharp smack of his father’s belt, about following his older brother from Corpus Christi to Austin, from construction job to construction job, because his brother always took care of him, always promised him a way out of the shitty little town they’d grown up in.

So Tommy followed his brother. His brother, and his brother’s daughter.

Sarah.

When he said her name, his voice broke. He stared at his shoes, his eyes wet in the flickering light, his arms crossed tight over his chest. Maria’s hands twitched; something in her wanted to reach out to him, but she held herself back. Waiting.

“That was when it all went to shit,” Tommy murmured. “When she died.”

He told her about the gunshots, about the blood blooming thick and red over Sarah’s abdomen, her eyes blank in death. He told her about his brother, broken. About how Tommy had to drag his brother away from her body, because more soldiers were coming.

“I’ve never forgiven myself,” he said. He barked a bitter laugh. “For a lot of things. But I see her body.” He looked up at Maria, his eyes so haunted Maria wanted to back away. “I see her body all the time. Just lyin’ there. Right where we left her.”

He told her about the Austin militarized zone, about leaving when the rations ran low, about almost dying that winter that they found themselves in St. Louis, surrounded by a group of hunters, Tommy and his brother still just strong enough, just alive enough, to be brought into their fold. About how he learned how to kill that winter. About how he got really, really good at it.

“When I couldn’t do it anymore, Joel and I moved on,” Tommy said. “We wound up in Boston. I joined the Fireflies. He didn’t. And then we went our separate ways. And now I’m here.”

It struck Maria as an oddly abrupt ending to what had, until then, been a detailed story, but she didn’t comment on it.

Tommy spread his hands wide, his eyes dry now. “That’s all I got for you, ma’am. So. What are you gonna do with me?”

Maria took in his face, lined with grief that made him look ancient, his long hair, lank from weeks on the road, his eyes, darkened and pleading with her for something she couldn’t name.

Her decision was made before she even realized it.

“I have an idea,” she said. “But I’ll have to consult with the others about it.”

“Others?”

Maria sighed. There was no turning back now. “You’re in Jackson City. My name is Maria Sanderson. My father, Allen, and I run this settlement. We have about five families also living here, helping us fortify the area. Building a fence, keeping an eye out for bandits. And we need to start growing crops.”

By this point, Tommy was staring at her, his mouth agape, his sorrow sliding off him easily. Maria almost laughed, but instead she said, “I’m not saying living here is going to be a cakewalk for you, but there might be a place for you yet, if you think you want to stay. You in, farm boy?”

“I’ll do you one better,” Tommy said, a wicked grin splitting his face now. “I can help you build that wall.”

Maria let herself smirk. “That’s what I like to hear.”

 

“Absolutely not.” Ted slammed his fist on the table in the meeting hall, the sound of it echoing through the room.

“What?” Maria stood, her palms braced against the table top, staring daggers at the man sitting across from her. “And why the hell not?”

Her father, who was sitting on her right side, put a hand on her elbow, pulling gently to get her to sit. She did, but not without a sigh of frustration.

“Let Ted say his piece,” her father said.

The meeting hall, which also served as her father’s office, was actually a repurposed mansion. The upstairs was closed off, pending a cleaning and repairs, but her father had begun using the enormous dining room in the meantime. Now, all of the community’s eight adults were seated at the table there, with Tommy sitting silent in a chair behind Maria. Every so often, she heard his chair creak as he fidgeted.

Ted jabbed a finger in Maria’s direction as he continued. “Do you have any idea how dangerous this bastard is? You’re telling me you think you can waltz in here and tell me this guy was a hunter, but -- _oh wait!_ \-- he knows how to grow some fucking plants, and we’ll welcome him with open arms? For all we know, he’s a spy sent by the bandits that keep attacking the town.”

Maria had to stop herself from glancing in Tommy’s direction. She hated to admit it, but Ted had a point.

Instead, she said, “I really doubt that.”

Ted snorted. “What proof do you have?”

Maria opened her mouth, then closed it. She sighed again. “All I have is his word.”

Ted laughed, but the sound was sour. “His word,” he spat. He sat back in his seat, as if the matter were finished.

“Ted,” Maria’s father said wearily, rubbing a hand over his lined forehead. “We all came here to start a new life. To leave whatever’s left of the world behind, as much as possible. We haven’t discussed a process for any newcomers who might show up, but now’s a good a time as any to discuss that. Maria and I have spoken with Tommy” -- he nodded toward Tommy’s chair -- “and we believe he is being honest with us about wanting to settle here. He’s had every reason and every opportunity to escape this place -- and make a hell of a ruckus while he did it -- but he hasn’t. And that’s good enough reason for us.”

Ted leaned forward, glowering. “A ruckus? Are you telling me you let him have access to weapons?”

“We didn’t _let him_ ,” Maria said, all pretense of being polite gone now. “He was injured, he was staying in our house, and yeah, if he’d wanted to, he could have found our guns.” She swallowed as she remembered how she had left him in the dining room of her house with every gun she owned. “But he didn’t. I don’t see why we shouldn’t trust him.”

“This is a fucking joke,” Ted muttered. His wife, Sherry, put a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off. Maria could never understand why Sherry put up with such an unpleasant man.

As Maria opened her mouth to argue further, Tommy cleared his throat behind her. All eyes focused on the chair behind her. She turned around to find Tommy blushing furiously, but standing steady.

“It’s all very well to listen to people while they sit around and call me a jackass, but I think I deserve some say in this, too,” he said. Maria cringed. She had told him before the meeting to stay quiet and let her and her father do the talking. Clearly, he had decided he didn’t much like this plan.

When no one said anything, Tommy pressed on. “I’m not givin’ y’all a whole lot of reason to like me. Hell, sometimes _I_ don’t like me. I’m not gonna lie to you folks; I’ve done some pretty godawful shit. But like it or not, Maria brought me here. She saved me, when I might’ve --” He faltered, licked his lips, took a minute to gather himself again. “Might’ve died,” he finished. “And maybe I wanted to, a little. But she gave me a second chance, and I’m not gonna waste it. I didn’t know I was bein’ brought here, but I _want_ to be here now. I want to stay. And I just hope y’all will let me.”

The silence made Maria’s ears ring.

“Why do you want to stay?” Mel asked from the other end of the table. She was a single mother, wiry and soft-spoken. Maria thanked whatever it was in the universe that had made it so that Ted had stayed silent.

“I been betrayed by a lot of people in my life,” Tommy said. “My family. My friends. The Fireflies. Maria coulda left me for dead, but instead she took a dyin’ stranger into her home. That’s all I need to convince me that you folks are good people. I figure I got a debt to repay to Maria, and to whatever the hell’s left of society.”

“Well said,” Maria’s father murmured. “Does anyone else have anything to say?” Tommy plunked back into his chair. No one else moved.

“Shall we take a vote, then?” Mel asked.

Maria’s father nodded. “All in favor of letting Tommy into our community?”

Around the table, Maria counted hands. Ted shot Sherry a poisonous look when her hand went up. Ted himself crossed his arms. Howard, an old man Maria and her father had picked up on their way out west, was asleep, his chin pressed to his chest, as he usually was during these meetings. Maria couldn’t help but stifle a giggle.

“Then I think it’s settled.” Maria’s father rose from his chair and turned to Tommy. “Welcome to Jackson.”

Tommy stood and shook the older man’s hand, grinning from ear to ear. He winked at Maria when no one was looking, and the gesture seemed to strike right at her chest. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Has anyone ever noticed how there are no Tommy and Maria fanfics? I mean, just stories about Tommy and Maria. Maybe that’s just me -- but I wanted to sort of explore how they might have met and fallen in love, as well as the Jackson settlement’s early days. I was going to wait to post this, but then it started turning into a crazy-long monster, so here's my first multichapter fic!
> 
> Story title stolen from Explosions in the Sky; chapter titles stolen from Mumford and Sons.


	2. Below My Feet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy has some trouble settling into the community. Plus, backstory on Maria!

When Maria was little, she had wanted to be a lot of things: a ballerina, a police officer, a veterinarian. But certainly, none of her plans had included the outbreak of a pandemic at the beginning of her junior year of high school, nor losing her mother and younger sister to infected in the early days of the Westchester QZ, after New York City itself had been lost to runners. She still remembered their brownstone in Brooklyn, with its narrow staircases and antique tables piled high with her father’s engineering books and blueprints. It had always smelled of her mother’s herbal tea.

But she also remembered her father’s face as he watched his wife and daughter being torn apart, his hands pressing Maria’s face into his chest before she, too, could look, ushering her back to the shoebox apartment they had been assigned. She remembered the hard look on his face the next morning, when he told her they had to start thinking about leaving, because they were no safer in Westchester than they had been in a city left to rot.

It was easier said than done.

Years passed while her father gathered the necessary information, gleaned from the FEDRA officials he worked with as he tried to keep the electricity in Westchester running in those bigwigs’ houses: which QZs were up and running, which had fallen, which had failed to get themselves started at all. From these bits and pieces, he marked up a map, using it and old travel guides to decide on the perfect place to escape to.

In the meantime, Maria had her own dues to pay.

Too old for the military prep school by the time it was established, too young, in her father’s opinion, for outside work duty, Maria became a soldier. In times before, she would have had to undergo a harsh training regimen, but now, as numbers dwindled, a uniform was sent to her house, a rifle pressed into her hands, a commanding officer barking harshly in her ear, showing her how to aim and shoot and reload. That was it.

And so the first time Maria had to shoot at a runner, she missed. Her shot went so wide that even she couldn’t track it, and the infected woman was on her in seconds. Panic flooded her as her arm went up automatically to grip the runner’s throat, holding back those gnashing teeth, a sure death sentence, as her other hand found the switchblade at her belt, a remnant of her previous life in a big city, strictly contraband, strictly off-protocol, and jammed the blade into the creature’s ear. The earthy, rotting smell of the fungus would stay with her for the rest of her life.

After that, she was at the shooting range every chance she got, her hands aching with blisters from where she gripped her guns, callousing over as she became a crack shot. She wasn’t going to die before she had a chance to get out -- and later, she sure as fuck wasn’t going to die on the road. In between shooting practices, she stole guns: weapons of all shapes and sizes, clips of ammo, boxes containing hundreds of rounds. Whenever her father told her to go, she would be ready.

By the time they were ready, her father had decided to add a few traveling companions: Ted, who, like Allen, was an engineer; Ted’s wife, Sherry, and their daughter, Mae, who was only a few years younger than Maria herself; Mel, an architect, and her then-eight-year-old son, Zach; Dean, a former Marine, his wife, Kate, a Navy navigator, and their two young children, Liam and Gemma. Maria had protested against the group bringing children.

“They’ll only slow us down,” she told her father. She didn’t add that, given the choice, it would be only herself and her father making this journey.

“Well, unfortunately for you,” her father said, his voice unusually hard, “we need their parents, so they’re coming whether you like it or not.”

In the end, Maria was glad to have them: the children for their levity, for their innocent hope, and their parents, for helping keep everyone alive, for not getting discouraged when they found Jackson City in worse shape than Allen had anticipated, for not giving up over the past three years of journeying and building and rebuilding.

She surprised herself one day, not long before Tommy appeared in the ditch in the woods, by thinking that, if she couldn’t have her mother or sister, if she and her father couldn’t be by themselves out here, then she would take the newly minted residents of Jackson any day. They were her family now.

 

Later, Maria would reflect that Tommy was lucky to have been inducted on the day he was -- because what happened after might have gotten him thrown out.

Maria’s father put Tommy to work immediately, planning spring planting in the fields that had been cleared a few weeks before Tommy’s arrival, and figuring out the best ways to reinforce the wall.

“I hate to tell you this,” Tommy said, poring over the diagrams for the fence, “but what you’re really gonna need is concrete.”

“Concrete.” Maria stood at his shoulder, like him leaning over the dinner table, which was covered in various papers. No longer a surgery patient, Tommy had moved to sleeping on their couch until they had time to fix up a house for him.

“Stronger than wood,” Tommy said, scratching the back of his neck.

“Obviously,” Maria said, rolling her eyes. “But where the fuck do you think we’re gonna find concrete? We’re in the middle of goddamn nowhere.”

“Nearly,” Tommy said. “ _Nearly_ the middle of goddamn nowhere. That hydroelectric plant a few miles from here --”

“--is crawling with infected,” Maria said, cutting him off. “Dad picked this place because he figured that the dam might still be running, and if not, he’d know how to fix it up, but there are just too many infected and not enough spare hands to take them all out. At least, not right now.”

“How d’you figure?”

Maria gave him a wry smile. “The funny thing about trying to start a town is, you have to figure out what gets highest priority. Building the fence we currently have was first priority. To keep us safe. Right now what we’re trying to figure out is, do we use our manpower to reinforce the fence, or do we start on planting? Because there just aren’t enough of us here to do both at the same time.”

Tommy frowned.

“She’s right.” Maria’s father was sitting closer to the window, writing an inventory of all the seeds he had liberated from the Westchester QZ before they escaped.

“I know she is,” Tommy muttered.

“So, what’s it gonna be?” Maria asked. “The crops or the fence?”

“It’s gonna be the crops, ain’t it?”

“Bingo.”

The planting took a week -- hours and hours of backbreaking labor, from sunup to sundown, with Tommy directing everyone. Later, he would tell Maria that he got more dirty looks that week than he ever did during his years of being a hunter and a Firefly, put together. Only the children enjoyed their work; they ran between the furrows, dropping seeds into holes, racing each other to the ends of the field. At the end of the day, Maria would fall into bed and fall into a dreamless sleep that was only broken by Tommy’s knock at her door in the morning. She came to resent the sound of his knuckles rapping against the wood.

On the last of planting, Maria, her father, and Tommy trudged into their house, not even bothering to take off their boots, they were so tired. Allen made a beeline for his room, but Tommy and Maria collapsed on the couch. Every part of her body was almost numb with fatigue.

“Well,” she said, dragging her voice out of her exhausted lungs, “we did it.” She looked over at Tommy. “All thanks to you, Firefly.”

Tommy chuckled. “Gotta give you some of the credit. Nobody would have paid me any mind if you hadn’t told them to.”

“All in a day’s work.” She closed her eyes, leaning her head against the wall behind the couch.

When she woke, she found that a blanket had been placed over her. Tommy was stretched out on the floor, the haggard lines of his face shadowed and deep in the moonlight coming in through the front window. Maria couldn’t help but smile to herself as she draped the blanket over him, then crept to her own room.

 

The next morning, Tommy was gone.

So were her guns.

Maria felt her heart lodge in her throat as she looked at the empty shelf in the upstairs hallway where she and her father usually kept their weapons.

“That two-timing son of a bitch!”

“Maria?” Her father called from downstairs.

“Dad?” she said as she ran down the steps. “Did you see --”

“I saw.” Her father had his glasses on and was marking up some of his blueprints. The calm in his manner only made her blood boil even hotter.

“Don’t you --” she tried again.

“The dam.”

“What?”

“Tommy’s at the dam.” Her father straightened and took off his glasses, holding her gaze level in his. “He and most of the others.”

Maria gaped, her hands shaking. “You _let them_?”

“Couldn’t stop them,” he said, shrugging. “Besides, Tommy is right. We came here for that dam. We all know that the military must have left supplies there, besides the fact that we could have electricity, if we want to. We have to deal with the infected there sometime.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” Maria said. She was now shaking so badly that she wasn’t sure if she could remain standing. “He’s been here, what, a week? And already you trust him better than you do your own daughter.”

“Maria --”

“The least you could have done was send me with them!”

“I wasn’t going to wake you --”

“Jesus Christ,” she said, throwing up her hands. “You know what? I’m going out.”

“Where are you going, Maria?” A hint of exasperation snuck into his voice.

“I don’t know, Dad. Even if I did, I don’t really feel like telling you right now.”

She slammed out of the house, her heart pounding in her chest as she flexed her hands into fists, stomping down the dirt road that led to the town square. She hadn’t behaved like this since she was in high school, since before the outbreak, and she hated herself for it.

She hugged herself against the morning chill; she hadn’t grabbed a jacket on her way out, and now goosebumps mingled with the resentment and rage roiling in her gut. Everything was quiet, save for the sounds of the water rushing from the river that fed the old dam. When she reached the town square, Maria perched on the edge of the old planter there, long empty and not yet filled again. No longer moving, no longer yelling, she tried to sort out what exactly the fuck had gotten into her. In the years since the outbreak, she hadn’t had the _time_ to get that kind of angry; keeping herself, her father, and Jackson’s residents alive had taken up most of the past nine years of her life. She reflected, not without a little bitterness, that one of these days, the years she’d spent living a survivor’s life would outnumber the years she’d had before.

The sound of shouts shook her from her thoughts. In the distance, she saw Sherry opening the gate, her rifle slung over her shoulder, Mae hovering at her mother’s elbow. As the gate swung wide, Mae shrieked, and Sherry covered her mouth with her hands. Maria was running toward them before she even knew she had gotten up.

“What happened?” she asked as she approached. As Kate pushed the gate shut, Maria saw Tommy and Dean, exhausted and battered, carrying a wooden board. Ted was lying on it, unconscious. One of his eyes was missing. Maria fought the bile rising in her throat.

“He’s alive,” Tommy said, but his face was grim. “Ran into some bandits on the way back. Almost got the upper hand on us, but we made it out.”

“If it hadn’t been for Tommy, Ted would be dead,” Mel murmured.

“Come on,” Maria said. “My house is closest. We’ll see what we can do to patch him up.”

 

Maria held Sherry’s hand as her father, with his minimal years of medical school, abandoned when he decided he’d rather look at machine innards than people innards, stitched Ted’s eye shut using what was left of his eyelid. Maria was grateful that Ted was unconscious through the entire ordeal, because Sherry already had her hand in a deathgrip.

Across the living room, Mae wrung her hands and talked to Tommy.

“Is it true? That you saved him?” Mae’s eyes were huge and glassy with fear.

Tommy shrugged. “I did what I had to do.”

“Thank you,” Mae said. She moved toward him, taking one of his large hands in hers, twining their fingers together. Tommy looked down at their suddenly conjoined hands, a look of shock on his face. Maria did, too, and a familiar monster began to roar in her stomach.

Before any of them could speak, Maria’s father walked into the room. Tommy dropped Mae’s hand and moved away, but she drifted toward him again, undeterred. Maria and Sherry both stood.

“He’ll be fine,” he said. “Or, as fine as he can be in his condition. But he should probably rest here for a while.”

“I’ll stay with him,” Sherry said, moving toward her husband. “Thank you, Allen. for everything.”

Maria’s father nodded, wiping his hands on a rag, as Sherry and Mae both drifted into the dining room. Mae glanced back at Tommy as she did so, but he was looking at Maria. She frowned at him and stalked back out of the house without a word.

 

Maria’s house was tense over the two days it took Ted to become strong enough to leave under his own power. Every time Tommy tried to talk to her, she invented an errand, clattered pots around the kitchen, or simply left the room.

“What’s wrong?” her father asked one evening as they washed the dinner dishes.

“Nothing,” Maria said, scrubbing her plate a little harder than necessary.

Her father snorted, but said nothing more.

Dean came to help Ted walk back to his own house. As the injured man left, he took Tommy’s hand in a weak handshake.

“I guess I should say thank you,” Ted said, his voice rough. “And I might owe you an apology.”

“You just worry about healin’ up,” Tommy said. Mae’s eyes were full of adoration, which made Maria nauseous.

As soon as Ted and his family left, Tommy turned to Maria.

“Maria --”

Maria shook her head and grabbed her jacket from the hook by the door.

“C’mon, Maria,” Tommy said, catching her arm. “I know you’re upset with me. We have to talk about this.”

She wrenched her hand out of Tommy’s grip. “I don’t have to talk to you about shit.”

“I’m sorry,” Tommy said as she opened the door.

“For what part of it?” She slammed the door shut again and put her hands on her hips. “For not telling me what you were planning? For not including me in it? For taking such a big risk that you almost got Ted killed?”

“All of it,” Tommy said, his voice quiet. He looked at the floor, hands jammed in his pockets.

“What were you thinking?”

“I was thinkin’ that the next thing this town needs -- far as I can tell -- is that dam.”

“And who put you in charge? You know, you’ve only been here a little more than a week. This isn’t the fucking Fireflies. We don’t go on suicide missions.”

“Your dad thought it was a good idea!” Tommy was looking at her now, his mouth set in a grim line, his eyes dark.

“And I didn’t! The least we could have done was put this up for a town vote.”

“I think you know how people would’ve voted.”

“Don’t you dare get smart with me,” Maria said, jabbing her finger into his chest.

“Then don’t fuckin’ act like I need to get your fuckin’ permission any time I -- or anyone else -- wants to do something. You’re not the boss here.”

“But I will be one day.” A feeling like ice sliced through Maria’s lungs. Her voice cracked, and she winced. “Dad’s not gonna be around forever, and I’m the next best leader this community’s got. And no one takes me seriously.” She laughed, a choking sound that sounded alien even to her. “Fuck, no one takes me seriously, not even you. And I saved your life.”

Tommy stared at her, his face unreadable. “I do take you seriously.”

“Could’ve fooled me.” She walked over to the couch and threw herself down on it, bracing her elbows on her knees and tangling her fingers in her short hair. “This whole thing is a fucking joke,” she muttered.

The sofa shifted as Tommy sat down next to her. “I do take you seriously,” he repeated. “Hell, you saved my life.”

“Much good that did me,” she said, smirking. She looked at him, hands still tugging at her hair. He took her wrists gently and moved her hands away from her face.

“Quit that,” he said. “You’ll hurt yourself.” A softness had crept into his tone, completely unfamiliar to Maria. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I am. You’re right; I need to learn how things work around here.”

Maria nodded. She couldn’t look away from his face. “I suppose I should be thanking you,” she murmured.

Tommy chuckled. “For what?”

“You were right,” she said. “We need that dam. We were just too afraid to take it.”

Tommy opened his mouth to say something, but they were interrupted by a knock at the door.

“I’ll get it,” Maria said, tearing her eyes away from his weathered face. She stood and walked to the door.

Mae stood on the other side.

“Oh,” she said, her eyes wide and innocent, her hands clasped behind her back. Her little-girl act had never ceased to irk Maria; the woman was twenty-three, for Christ’s sake. “Hi, Maria. Is Tommy here?”

Maria looked back at Tommy, who was still sitting on the couch, looking lost.

“He’s here,” Maria said, her voice pinched.

Mae leaned around Maria a little to wave to Tommy. “Dad’s all settled in now, so I was wondering if, maybe...” She giggled. “Do you want to get some fresh air with me? I feel like I haven’t really had a walk since Daddy got hurt.”

“Uh,” Tommy said. He swallowed and stood. “Sure, I guess. Why not?”

Mae beamed as Tommy walked toward her. He nodded at Maria as he passed her in the doorway. Mae didn’t look at her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was hoping to get a little more traction with this story before posting the second chapter, but that didn't happen, so here it is anyways.
> 
> In case anyone is wondering, the Gemma mentioned here and in the next chapter is the same Gemma who is Ellie's girlfriend in ["Always"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5656186) and ["First Dance."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5715091)


	3. In Ivy and In Twine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter! Stupid feelings are felt and resolved, kissing happens, there is fluff.

The weeks passed; winter arrived. The winds quickly grew bitter, and, as she did every year, Maria dreaded the times she had to leave the relative warmth of the indoors to venture outside.

Unfortunately for her, her father had taken to working in his office every day, including weekends, dragging Maria and Tommy with him so they could discuss wall fortifications and repairs to the dam and power plant. Maria bundled up against the cold and stayed under her layers of sweaters and scarves until she’d been in any indoor place for well over half an hour.

The second time she did this, Tommy laughed at her.

“I thought you grew up in New York,” he said. He was wearing only a denim jacket. “Ain’t you used to the cold?”

He couldn’t quite hear her from under her balaclava, but it sounded suspiciously like “Fuck off.”

It was a rare joke, though. If they weren’t working together, Maria and Tommy were studiously avoiding each other. As Maria hunted, took inventory of the plant, or helped out around town, Tommy spent time with Mae.

Or so Maria heard.

“Mae’s taken a real shine to him,” Mel said one afternoon as she and Maria skinned and portioned out a deer they had shot earlier in the day.

“Hm,” Maria said, not looking at her friend.

“He’s a good man,” Mel continued. “Mae could do worse.”

“Like there are any other men for her latch on to around here,” Maria said, failing to keep the pinched annoyance from her voice. “Who’s she gonna shack up with? Howard?”

Mel sat back on her heels. Her face, as always, was unreadable.

“What?” Maria asked.

“Nothing,” she murmured, picking up her hunting knife and getting back to work.

 

Just after New Year’s Day, a storm dropped two feet of snow on Jackson: not enough to cause any damage, but enough to slow all but the most essential activities.

“No meetings today,” Maria’s father said, waving her off. “Might as well enjoy the snow.”

“You heard the man,” Tommy said. He hadn’t talked to her outside of a planning meeting in weeks, but his eyes sparkled with mischief. “C’mon, Maria, let’s go outside.”

Maria raised an eyebrow at him. “It’s cold,” she said.

Tommy groaned. “It’s gonna be cold for weeks yet, girl. Put your coat on and let’s just go out.”

Maria sighed. “Fine. Do you need anything while we’re out, Dad?”

Her father made a shooing motion with his hands. “I’m fine. I probably need the rest, honestly. And you do, too.”

“Some rest,” Maria muttered, but all the same, she bundled up and followed Tommy out the door.

In the town square, Liam was chasing Gemma around the planter, a packed snowball held like a threat in his hands. In front of Mel’s house, Howard and Zach were making a snowman taller than they were.

“I never had snow like this growing up,” Tommy said, hanging back to watch. “Even in Boston, the snow got dirtied up so fast it hardly seemed worth it.” His eyes were wide, innocent.

Maria couldn’t help but giggle. “God, you’re like a little kid.”

Tommy chuckled. “Can’t help it.” Suddenly, he grabbed her mittened hand in his own gloved one, tugging her toward the snowball fight.

Maria laughed. “I should go check on Ted and Sher --”

“Tommy!”

It was like Maria had gotten hit in the face with a snowball.

Mae came bounding out of her house, wading through the hip-deep snow to get to Tommy, who dropped Maria’s hand.

“I was wondering when you were gonna make it out here,” Mae said when she reached them. Her voice was breathless, her cheeks pink with snow.  “Oh, hi, Maria,” Mae added. Maria had never gotten along with Mae, but she had no idea when she’d gotten to dislike the woman so much.

Maria cleared her throat, trying to move the lump that had unexpectedly formed there. “I -- should actually -- go,” she said, her voice faint. Her vision clouded, and she stumbled backward a bit as she turned around to head back to her house.

She was almost all the way there when she heard someone calling her name.

“Maria! Maria? C’mon, Maria, stop.” Tommy was pleading.

“Can’t,” Maria said, not slowing or looking at him. “Just remembered I have to do something. You should go -- y’know, hang out with Mae and the others.”

“Maria, slow down, goddammit.”

Maria trudged on until something hard hit her in the back. She whirled around to find Tommy packing another snowball.

“What the _fuck_ , Tommy?” she said, her jaw dropping.

“Seems like this is the only way to get your attention.” And then a snowball was hitting her square in the face.

Her nose stinging and burning, her eyes filled with ice crystals, Maria reached blindly for a handful of snow, which she packed into a ball and whipped at her closest approximation of Tommy’s location.

“Gonna have to do better than that!” he said, somewhere off to her right.

She scrubbed a hand across her face, rubbing the snow out of her eyes before she went for another handful of powder, her eyes scanning the white expanse for Tommy. This wasn’t the right kind of snow to make good snowball, but it would have to do.

A snowball hit her squarely in the ass. She heard Tommy give a whoop.

“You’ll pay for that one, Firefly!” She turned around and pitched her snowball at his face. It hit his forehead just as he ducked, snow dripping into his eyes as he cursed.

Maria laughed, the kind of belly laugh she rarely allowed herself anymore. Her eyes screwed themselves up with mirth, and she could feel the warmth of tears leaking from the corners. She couldn’t see again, so it was completely unexpected when Tommy barreled into her, tackling her to the ground.

The fall didn’t stop her from laughing, but his cold, chapped lips against hers did.

She couldn’t react at first, shock freezing her to the spot more than the snow ever could. She stiffened even as his lips moved over hers. He pulled back, his forehead lined with concern.

His blue eyes were hazy with uncertainty and a kind of fear she hadn’t ever seen in a man’s face. She knew Tommy’s type; fuck, Tommy was _her_ type, she realized with an embarrassed pang. Vaguely, she remembered high school, all the bad boys she’d pined over, the pictures of long-haired, dark-eyed rebels she’d taped up on her bedroom walls. Silly memories and dreams she’d washed away with the blood and violence of her current life.

But in that moment, it all came roaring back to her: the warmth coiling in her stomach, her heart pounding in her chest so hard she thought he must have felt it even through their clothes, her breath coming in small gasps.

The suspicion that lived in her, even now, all these years after she’d caught Jeff Tarantino cheating on her with a girl from another school, the two of them making out in the alleyway behind the school.

“Maria?”

Tommy’s voice called her back to the present. She saw again his uncertainty, his fear, his desire to make amends after he’d led that group to the plant and didn’t tell her about it, the remnants of a tan from the fall planting, the man she found bleeding out in the woods and wearing a Firefly pendant, the man who had stayed up all night with her father to work on blueprints and plans, the man who had saved Ted even though he’d had every right to let Ted suffer just a little bit more.

Tommy hadn’t left. He hadn’t betrayed any of them, even when he’d had every opportunity. And now --

Maria wound her hand around the back of his neck, gripping the long hairs there, and pulled his face back down to hers, pressing her lips against his with a ferocity that surprised even her. She slid her tongue into his mouth, searching him, confirming that he was the man he’d proven himself to be. When she came up for air, Tommy was breathing hard.

“Jesus Christ, woman,” he said, his tone and his expression reverent. “If I’d know you could kiss like that, I woulda done this ages ago.”

Maria smirked at him, her lips swollen. “Yeah? I thought you just wanted to kiss Mae.”

She watched as confusion, realization, and disbelief crossed his face, all in a matter of seconds. Her chest loosened with a relief she didn’t know she’d been begging for.

“Is that what all that shit was about?” Tommy asked, incredulous. He sat up and pulled her with him so they were sitting in the snow instead. “Avoidin’ me and ignorin’ me -- because you thought I was interested in _Mae_?”

“Well, it sounds pretty fucking stupid when you say it like that,” Maria said, rolling her eyes and flushing.

“It’s a little stupid,” Tommy said, poking her arm. He moved closer, so that his face was only an inch away from hers. “I’ve only had eyes for you.”

Maria felt herself go bright red. She opened her mouth to respond, but she discovered she couldn’t find the words.

Tommy smirked. “You’re so pretty when you blush,” he whispered, before leaning in again, moving his mouth slowly, softly against hers.

It was her turn to be out of breath. “Tommy Miller,” she said, “you better not be pulling my leg right now.”

Tommy laughed. “Not only are you my boss’s daughter,” he said, putting an arm around her and pulling her into his lap, “but you’re the _mayor’s_ daughter, and probably also the next mayor. No, sweetheart, I wouldn’t dream of pullin’ one over on you. I’ve wanted to kiss you since I woke up on your kitchen table and saw your face. I thought you were an angel.” He smoothed her hair back from her face, and she wasn’t sure if she shivered from his touch or from the cold.

“You Texas boys sure do have a way with words,” she said, her head swimming.

“Only when there’s a beautiful woman nearby.” He kissed her again, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, wanting to be as close to him as possible.

When he pulled back again, he held her close, tucking his head against her shoulder.

“You gave me my life back,” he murmured into her ear. “I love you.”

If Maria had been speechless before, she wasn’t sure if she’d ever speak again at this rate.

Tommy went on: “I know you might not feel the same way but...”

Maria held him tighter. She didn’t think so, not yet.

But she thought she would someday.

 

Not too many months later, as she sat at the dining room table, working, while Tommy and her father cooked dinner in the kitchen and she listened to the sound of their laughter, the delicious smell of chili hanging in the air (”No beans, thank you very much,” Tommy had said), the glimpses she caught of Tommy with a battered apron tied around his waist, bracing himself on the kitchen counter with his large hands, hands that had killed and maimed and worse, but had also saved Ted, planted their crops, fortified their fence, rebuilt their plant, held her at night when nightmares threatened --

She knew then, as she knew every day after that, that she loved him.

She loved him on their wedding day, on the day he decided he had to go back to Texas to grab what he could from his brother’s old house, on the day he returned with a picture of Joel and Sarah and cried in her arms like a child, on the day Joel himself showed up at their gate with a teenage girl in tow and then suddenly left, on the day they returned and settled in Jackson.

And she loved him now, as he grabbed her hand and helped her up out of the snow, both of them soaked as they walked, hand in hand, back to the house where they both lived.

She loved him.

She just didn’t know it yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not terribly good at writing romance, but this one was so much fun to write, if only to explore my own curiosity about these two. I have a few ideas to follow up this story; keep an eye out for them if you enjoyed this one!


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